With a primal roar, the goblins abaheir feast, their bloodlust ignited by the assault on their leader. Eyes bzing with malice, they turheir attention to the audacious intruder, their teeth bared and dripping with warm blood.

  “Kekekeh!”

  “Kyeeeh!”

  “Kyakyakaah!”

  Razor-sharp fangs, cws, and bdes, once busy carving flesh from the fallen, now turned menagly towards Daisuke. The goblins charged forth like a releempest, only to halt abruptly iracks, frozen by an unseen force.

  Daisuke’s eyes gleamed with an iy akin to a bird of prey, instilling an overwhelming and primal fear in the monsters.

  Intimidate!

  As the goblins cowered from the skill’s effects, Daisuke swiftly scooped Amara into his arms and leaped atop the rise. Awestruck by his impressive dispy of power, Mana gnced from the wolf pup to the silver-haired youth whose eye’s radiated fidend resolve. Her heart sank when his head snapped around, almost meically, and his gaze fell upon the shuddering toddlers.

  “W-Wait!” she pleaded, her voice quivering with desperation. “They mean no harm! Please, don’t hurt them!”

  “S-She’s right,” Gloria curred with a respectful bow, firelight illuminating her bck tunic. “These children pose no threat.”

  Amara stood in stunned silence.

  Daisuke’s gaze narrowed as he observed the toddlers ging to their mothers in despair, their rge, tear-filled eyes i and devoid of malice or evil.

  Acc to the Monster Guide Handbook, Daisuke pondered, flipping through the mental pages with a furrowed brow, monsters are generally predisposed to having an i aversion to humans and an untrolble desire to either kill or devour them, even from infancy. But… these baby goblins look incredibly human.

  Are you seriously tellihat those gehat predominantly exist in most monsters weren’t ied by them? Is it possible those traits are just deyed until puberty or something? I really trust them?

  As Daisuke looked into the eyes of the horrified toddlers, memories flooded back of the distrust he faced wheempted to apply for a job in Dusthaven. All he had wanted was to save money for his mother’s medical bills, but his ins in the slums had led everyoo doubt his iions. If only they had given him a ce, would his mother still be alive?

  “Rawrwu,” whimpered Zephyr, as if eg the ses of the others.

  “SEIZE THEM!” came a sudden and furious bellow from the goblin leader, his teeth gnashing, veins bulging in his forehead as he unceremoniously peeled himself up off the ground.

  Daisuke’s eyebrows furrowed. He really is an anomalous monster, he mused inwardly before turning to his partner. “Zephyr,” he anded firmly.

  As Zephyr’s jaws widened, an intense heat radiated from within, apanied by a blinding e-red aura. The toddlers and their mothers instinctively shut their eyes, brag for the impending inferno. Mana and Gloria raised their arms pleadingly, but it was too te.

  WHOOSHHHHH!

  Zephyr’s neapped forward like a coiled spring, unleashing a torrent of iing fmes. However, instead of targeting the ioddlers, the fiery deluge engulfed the goblin leader and its monstrous horde. When the fmes subsided, more than two-thirds of the goblins were reduced to ash, and the rest y badly injured.

  Amidst the sm aftermath, Daisuke locked eyes with the leader, its protective barrier dissipating.

  DING!

  [Goblin Shaman | Lvl 22 | ????]

  “Of course you weren’t going to go down so easily,” he murmured before turning to the others. “Stay here,” he anded calmly. “We’ll finish them off.”

  Dumbfounded, Mana watched as the duo fidently hurled themselves off the ledge and into the fray. “That small wolf… in an instant,” she murmured incredulously. “Just who are they?”

  “Haxks and Zephyr—they’re adventurers like us,” informed Amara, equally astounded. “I khey were strong, but this is…”

  “More importantly,” Mana pressed urgently, “what about Prid Lilith?”

  Amara’s response was a slow, sorrowful shake of her head.

  “I see,” Mana replied, her tone flicted as she attempted to rise. It was only then that Amara noticed the archer’s missing leg.

  “Oh no!” she excimed frantically, her eyes widening with panic as she hurried over to the girl. “Mana! Y!” she sobbed, her voice trembling. “Y’s been—”

  Mana offered a faint smile as the girl rushed to support her. “This is my ato,” she murmured quietly.

  “Ato? What are you—”

  “Please five me. I’m sorry I’ve always been a bystander instead of stepping in to protect you from the stant bullying. rid Lilith did to you was unfivable. I k… I’ve always known, a—”

  Amara shook her head, tears streaming down her cheeks. “There’s nothing tive,” she admitted early. “If you had intervened and bee a victim, I would have felt even worse. It’s my fault for never finding the ce to stand up to them.”

  Gloria approached them with a sympathetic smile. “While ce is an admirable quality that we should all possess, everyone finds it in their own time and circumstances. It wasn’t fair that you had to search desperately for yours just to find happiness. The bme lies with those who abused you, not with yourselves.”

  Mana and Amara exged smiles, a mix of sadness and gratitude, before their attention tly drawn to a goblin smming into the wall below them. The creature slowly slid to the ground like a squashed bug, leaving a trail of purple blood along the wall.

  Despite wielding offensive magic to aid its kin, the shaman watched with growing unease as the goblins fell like wheat before a scythe. Death loomed closer with every passing moment; it khat if things tinued in this manner, its own demise was immi.

  Driven by desperation and the instinct for self-preservation, the shaman finally decided to summon its trophy—its ultimate achievemee risking its destru.

  With a furrowed brow, Daisuke observed in fusion as a beam of light shot out from the shaman’s staff and stru elevated ptform on the far side of the cavern.

  “Huh? Did that previous attack roast its brain cells or something?” he quipped, but when he spied a blur of movement, he fell silent.

  Using the falling rocks as stepping stones, hopping from one precarious foothold to another until it nded on solid ground, a curious goblin emerged on the se.

  At a single g was evident that this creature was different. Uhe toddlers, its human-like features bore the marks of maturity, reflected in its t stature that rivaled even the shaman’s, and a gleam in its eyes that betrayed any innoce.

  It yawned with a dreary, indifferent gaze, its body leather armor likely sged from fallen adventurers. The creature exuded an air of disdain, as if the entire world had do an injustid it would much rather be exempt from all worldly affairs.

  Every movement emanated a weariness, as if existeself was a tiresome burde, without a single and uttered, it pivoted its club towards its foes, eager to dispose of them so that it could return to its slumber.

  DING!

  [Demihuman Goblin | Lvl 26 | Unique]

  Unique? Daisuke’s eyes widened in arm. I thought Giant and Filed Boss was the st tier in the hierarchy?

  The moment it received a defense buff from the shaman, the demihuman lurched forward, its lethargic gaze fixated on the wolf pup. Zephyr was caught mid-strike, sharp teeth primed to pluo the neck of a random goblin, when the demihuman’s massive club hurtled toward him with terrifying velocity.

  Instinctively, the e aborted the attad instead used the monster’s chest as a springboard to unch himself to safety. In a heartbeat, the club made tact with the goblin’s head. Time seemed to stretch as blood, brain matter, and fragments of skull erupted outward.

  Zephyr’s gaze burned with ferocity as it locked onto the demihuman, a silent challenge passiween them as they prepared for the iable csh.

  Daisuke’s heart pounded with as he watched Zephyr darting around like a leaf swept up in a fierce storm. Even while suppressing the goblins that persistently swarmed like flies, the pup desperately tried to fend off the stoic hybrid. But his fangs and cws couldn’t pee the creature’s armor, nor the defensive buff it had received.

  Daisuke clearly hat the odds were firmly stacked against the e. Unwelemories of Zephyr’s previous downfall fshed through his mind like lightning. Urgently, he attempted to carve a path through the goblins blog his right fnk. However, for every foe he dispatched, another swiftly took its pce, creating an eide of adversaries.

  As desperation mounted, Daisuke summoned his Magic s in an attempt to subdue the demihuman and grant Zephyr a moment of relief. Yet, his efforts were promptly foiled as the goblins seized the s, their mog ughter eg through the chaos. To make matters worse, the shaman unleashed a barrage of offensive magitensifying Daisuke’s predit.